Havana | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Directed by | Sydney Pollack |
Screenplay by | Judith Rascoe David Rayfiel |
Story by | Judith Rascoe |
Produced by | Sydney Pollack Richard Roth Ronald L. Schwary |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Owen Roizman |
Edited by | Fredric Steinkamp William Steinkamp |
Music by | Dave Grusin |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 144 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $40 million |
Box office | $9.6 million |
Havana is a 1990 American drama film starring Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Alan Arkin and Raul Julia, directed by Sydney Pollack with music by Dave Grusin. The film's plot concerns Jack Weil (Redford), an American professional gambler who decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble in 1958 on the eve of the Cuban Revolution.
It is the eve of the Cuban Revolution's culmination. On Christmas Eve, 1958, aboard the boat from Miami to Havana, Roberta Duran enlists the aid of Jack Weil in smuggling radios for the revolutionaries in the hills. Weil agrees only because he is romantically interested in her. When they rendezvous for the "payoff," Roberta reveals that she is married, dashing Weil's hopes. In Havana, Weil meets a Cuban journalist acquaintance and during a night on the town, they run into Roberta and her husband, Dr. Arturo Duran, a revolutionary leader. Duran asks Weil for further aid for the cause. Weil turns him down.
After a night of debauchery, Weil reads a newspaper account of Duran's arrest and death. In shock, he continues with the planned poker game, coincidentally meeting the head of the secret police. He learns that Roberta was also arrested and tortured in custody. He pressures another player in debt to him to obtain her release. Shaken by her husband's death and her own experience in jail, she lets him shelter her in his apartment, but disappears that afternoon.
Realizing that he is in love with Roberta and encouraged by an old gambling friend, Weil drives into Cuba's interior to find her at Duran's old estate. He persuades her to return with him to Havana and to leave Cuba with him. When she asks, he explains that a lump on his arm contains a diamond that he had put there in his youth as insurance. He makes arrangements for her to leave Cuba via boat, but on his return to the apartment, he is assaulted by two Cubans, who inform him that Duran demands he get Roberta out of the country. Weil has a CIA acquaintance, Marion Chigwell, who confirms that Duran is still alive. He intimidates Chigwell into working with him to free Duran.
Pretending to work for the CIA, Weil goes to see Duran, who is being held by the chief of the secret police. He tells the chief that Washington has plans for Duran and wants him released, with a payoff of $50,000. Weil goes to a doctor and then a jeweler to sell the diamond to raise the bribe for Duran's release. He tells Roberta, who had decided to make a life with him, that her husband is alive. In shock, she leaves on her own to find her husband. Meanwhile, Weil blows the big game with high rollers, for whom he had been angling since he arrived in Havana. The casino's manager, Joe Volpi, forgives him, knowing he has made rescuing Roberta his priority.
On New Year's Eve, 1959, the revolutionaries have won. The upper class, government officials, and the secret police all make a mad dash to leave the country. The people pour into the streets, celebrating the victory by trashing the casinos and dancing. Weil and Volpi agree that it is time for them to leave. The next morning, Weil is in a restaurant preparing to depart. He sees Chigwell, who informs him that he is working on a new book, The Cuisine of Indochina . Roberta shows up to bid him farewell. She sees the bandage on his arm and discovers what it cost him to save her husband for her. She remains with the revolution, and he has been changed by it.
Four years later in 1963, Jack drives down to the Florida Keys and gazes across the sea toward Havana, hoping to see a boat bringing Roberta. He knows the ferry is no longer running. However, he does this every year in the hope he might someday see Roberta again. He also realizes that the changes in Cuba are being echoed in the United States.
Filming began on November 22, 1989, and was completed on April 28, 1990. Sydney Pollack hoped to film in Havana. However, U.S. law would not allow the producers to spend any U.S. dollars in Cuba, U.S. citizens could not legally enter Cuba, and relations between the U.S. and Cuba in 1989 were not conducive to filming an American motion picture in Havana. Thus, it was decided to make the entire film in the Dominican Republic. The vegetation was the same, and Santo Domingo offered certain architectural similarities, though not a wide boulevard like Havana's famous El Prado (Paseo de Marti). The end scene was filmed in Key West, Florida.
Tomás Milián, who played the Batista's head of secret police, had lived in Cuba during the 1950s and commented that the film recreated Havana during the Batista regime's last days in great detail. Many of the extras were exiled Cubans who had moved to the Dominican Republic. According to Sydney Pollack, "The atmosphere became quite emotional... They remembered the old days in Havana. Our set took them back 30 years."[ citation needed ]
The film's main set, informally called "The Big Set", was a quarter-mile long (400 m) street surrounded by façades representing casinos, restaurants, and hotels. Interior scenes were shot in replicated casino floors, room suites, and cafes. The Prado was reconstructed at a former airbase in the Dominican Republic. To replicate it, a team of about 300 tradesmen was used, and over 80 neon signs needed to be made in the U.S. and shipped to the Dominican Republic. The set took 20 weeks to construct. Costume designer Bernie Pollock had to outfit 2,000 extras with costumes and needed 8000–10,000 costumes for frequent changes during different scenes of the film. Besides 1950s period clothing, there were large numbers of hats, accessories, jewelry, and gloves, along with 1950s Cuban military uniforms. The wardrobe items were brought in from both Los Angeles and England. About one hundred 1950s vintage American automobiles, buses, and trucks appear in the film.
The version of "Rum and Coca-Cola" by The Andrews Sisters is a re-recorded version from 1961 from their DOT Records album Greatest Hits, which was recorded two years after the film's setting.
Raul Julia chose to remain uncredited because the film's producers would not give him above-the-title credit alongside Robert Redford and Lena Olin. [2]
The reviews were generally negative. The film has a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 26 reviews with the consensus: "Handsomely produced and dramatically inert, Havana squanders its convincing recreation of pre-revolution Cuba by using it as a disconnected backdrop to a turgid romance." [3] On a budget of $40 million, [4] Havana made only $9 million in the United States and Canada but grossed $27 million overseas for a worldwide total of $36 million. [5] [6]
The musical score received Golden Globe, [7] Oscar, [8] and Grammy nominations. [9] It was one of Dave Grusin's more acclaimed scores.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as a military dictator from 1952 until his overthrow in the Cuban Revolution in 1958.
Meyer Lansky, known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States.
The Cuban Revolution was the military and political effort to overthrow Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship which reigned as the government of Cuba between 1952 and 1959. It began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which saw former president and military general, Fulgencio Batista topple the nascent Cuban democracy and consolidate power. Among those opposing the coup was Fidel Castro, then a novice attorney who attempted to contest the coup through Cuba's judiciary. Once these efforts proved fruitless, Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl led an armed attack on the Cuban military's Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953. Following the attack's failure, Fidel Castro and his co-conspirators were arrested and formed the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) in detention. At his trial, Fidel Castro launched into a two hour speech that won him national fame as he laid out his grievances against the Batista dictatorship. In an attempt to win public approval, Batista granted amnesty to the surviving Moncada Barracks attackers and the Castros fled into exile. During their exile, the Castros consolidated their strategy in Mexico and subsequently reentered Cuba in 1956, accompanied by Che Guevara, whom they had encountered during their time in Mexico.
Lena Maria Jonna Olin is a Swedish actress. She has received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
The Havana Conference of 1946 was a historic meeting of United States Mafia and Cosa Nostra leaders in Havana, Cuba. Supposedly arranged by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the conference was held to discuss important mob policies, rules, and business interests. The Havana Conference was attended by delegations representing crime families throughout the United States. The conference was held during the week of December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional. The Havana Conference is considered to have been the most important mob summit since the Atlantic City Conference of 1929. Decisions made in Havana resonated throughout US crime families during the ensuing decades.
I Am Cuba is a 1964 film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm. An international co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba, it is an anthology film mixing political drama and propaganda.
El Tropicana Night Club in Havana, Cuba located in a lush, 36,000-square-metre (390,000 sq ft) estate tropical garden opened on December 30, 1939 at the Villa Mina in Marianao. It is located next door to the old Colegio de Belén, Havana, presently, the Instituto Técnico Militar.
The Electric Horseman is a 1979 American western comedy-drama film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda and directed by Sydney Pollack. The film is about a former rodeo champion who is hired by a cereal company to become its spokesperson and then runs away on a $12 million electric-lit horse and costume he is given to promote it in Las Vegas after he finds that the horse has been abused.
Hotel Tryp Habana Libre is one of the larger hotels in Cuba, situated in Vedado, Havana. The hotel has 572 rooms in a 25-floor tower at Calle 23 and Calle L. Opened in 1958 as the Habana Hilton, the hotel famously served as the residence of Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries throughout 1959, after their capture of Havana.
William Alexander Morgan was an American-born Cuban guerrilla commander who fought in the Cuban Revolution, leading a band of rebels that drove the Cuban army from key positions in the central mountains as part of Second National Front of Escambray, thereby helping to pave the way for Fidel Castro's forces to secure victory. Morgan was one of about two dozen U.S. citizens to fight in the revolution and one of only three foreign nationals to hold the rank of comandante in the rebel forces. In the years after the revolution, Morgan became disenchanted with Castro's turn to communism and he became one of the leaders of the CIA-supplied Escambray rebellion. In 1961, he was arrested by the Cuban government and, after a military trial, executed by firing squad in the presence of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
The Lost City is a 2005 American drama film directed by Andy García. It stars García, Dustin Hoffman, Inés Sastre and Bill Murray.
The Hotel Nacional de Cuba is a historic Spanish eclectic style hotel in Havana, Cuba, opened in 1930. Located on the sea front of Vedado district, it stands on Taganana Hill, offering commanding views of the sea and the city.
Marta Fernández Miranda de Batista, also known as "Marta del Pueblo", was First Lady of Cuba from 1952 until 1959 as the second wife of Cuban president and dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was overthrown by Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, which forced the couple to flee permanently into exile.
Cuba is a 1979 American adventure thriller film directed by Richard Lester and starring Sean Connery, portraying the build-up to the 1958 Cuban Revolution, filmed in Panavision. Neil Sinyard in his The Films of Richard Lester wrote that the film, "developed originally out of an idea of Lester's own, inspired by a conversation with a friend about great modern leaders. From there, Lester's thoughts began to formulate in complex ways around Castro and Casablanca (1942), and out of that audaciously bizarre combination comes Cuba.
The Hotel Habana Riviera by Iberostar, originally known as the Havana Riviera, is a historic resort hotel located on the Malecón waterfront boulevard in the Vedado district of Havana, Cuba. The hotel,which is managed by the Spanish Iberostar chain, was built in 1957 and still maintains its original 1950s style. It has twenty-one floors containing 352 rooms all of which feature views of the water and the Vedado neighborhood.
Cuba has suffered from widespread and rampant corruption since the establishment of the Republic of Cuba in 1902. The book Corruption in Cuba states that public ownership resulted in "a lack of identifiable ownership and widespread misuse and theft of state resources... when given opportunity, few citizens hesitate to steal from the government." Furthermore, the complex relationship between governmental and economic institutions makes them especially "prone to corruption."
The Hotel NH Capri La Habana is a historic high rise hotel located in central Havana, Cuba.
The Cuban Revolution of 1933, also called the Sergeants' Revolt, was a coup d'etat that occurred in Cuba in September 1933. It began as a revolt of sergeants and enlisted men in the military, who soon allied with student activists in the Directorio Estudiantil Universitario.
The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955–1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates, which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, and Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers, seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law". The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the "in SS Patris II" bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend László Moholy-Nagy. The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, through Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in an effort to erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city. The plan was abandoned and was not made.
Jaime Mariné y Montes was a Cuban baseball administrator and soldier. He is best known as the second president of the International Baseball Federation (IBF) from 1940 to 1943. Mariné, nicknamed "El Catalancito," was also a close associate of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.